Archive for September, 2009

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have refused to allow the final text of their health care bill to be posted online prior to their vote on it. They claim the language is too technically difficult for ordinary people to understand, so that releasing the text would just sow confusion.

More likely, the Dems don’t want people to see language like that which appears at pages 80-81 of the bill. There it says: ” “Beginning in 2015, payment [under Medicare] would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician’s resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization.” Thus, in any year in which a particular doctor’s average per-patient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the doctor’s payments by 5 percent.”

So if a doctor authorizes care that a bureaucrat thinks is too expensive, the bureaucrat has the power to cut his reimbursement. So the doctor’s incentive is to provide cheap care in all cases, for fear of being shortchanged, since he doesn’t know what these national percentages are. Once again, we have bureaucrats second-guessing doctors. Oh, we won’t ration care! Heaven forbid. We’ll get the doctors to do it, so you can hate the doctors rather than us. If there are any doctors left after we get through with them. Death panels? We don’t need no stinkin’ death panels! Ha ha ha!

While amusing, this fails to consider the most disturbing sentence in this statement: ‘The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized.’ This prima facie evidence of a totalitarian mindset would cause me to jerk my kids out of the school system as soon as possible. One wonders what other activities don’t take place in these schools because they are ‘unauthorized’.

NBC News president Steve Capus fired back at Americans for Limited Government Friday, after the conservative group published an email allegedly from NBC producer Jane Stone to its director of media outreach Alex Rosenwald, with one line: “Bite me Jew Boy.”

“I’m still in shock, and outraged that this reckless organization would go out with such a defamatory, irresponsible statement,” Capus told POLITICO. “We have done a complete email analysis, all of our IT, all of our records.”

Methinks the laddie doth protest too much. If the charge were false, and they could prove it was false, a simple ‘No, that’s untrue.’ would seem to be sufficient — after all, it’s such a bizarre thing for an NBC producer to do that a lot of people just aren’t going to believe it no matter what the evidence.

On the other hand, it’s odd for an organization like Americans for Limited Government to make such a charge unless they have a pretty airtight case. We have seen media folks do similar things in the past — Dan Rather clinging like a drowning rat to the fake ‘George Bush dodged the draft’ memo comes immediately to mind — so, while unlikely, it’s certainly not impossible. And, next to ant-Catholicism, judenhasse is one of those dirty little secrets that the Left indulges in when they think nobody else is listening.

Megan McArdle is equally puzzled, and hypothesizes that Americans for Limited Government were ‘punked’ somehow. (Of course, she supported Obama for President, so she’s not, let us say, the sharpest knife in the drawer.) So I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out.

For example, iPhones and iPod touches are being evaluated for use by nursing students to carry medical reference books electronically “instead of requiring them to lug 10-pound books about the clinics,” he said. Currently, nursing students use HP Ipaq handhelds, but those older devices are being retired.

The Kindles could be used by a broad range of students, and might be available at the school bookstore pre-loaded with all the textbooks needed for a specific curriculum, Hester said.

After losing his job in hotel management in 1997, Bertram Rohloff wanted to open a stand to sell sandwiches but found he could not get the necessary permits to set up shop. So instead he envisaged an evolution in food-preparation technology, a step beyond the rolling hot-dog cart, because without the necessary permits, neither the grill nor the sausages could touch the ground.

Regulation is the mother of invention? Say rather than markets work whether you want them to or not.

Beware of politicians who claim to be “humbled by the responsibility the American people have placed upon me.” It’s a neon sign flashing the opposite. And sure enough, in almost the next sentence, the president allowed that “I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.” Really? The whole world pulses with hope and expectation because Obama is president? People in Amsterdam, São Paulo, and Taipei have a spring in their step because an Illinois Democrat won the White House? Well, yes, he says, but it’s not “about me,” rather it’s a reflection of dissatisfaction with the “status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences and outpaced by our problems.” Oh yes, and everyone around the world was electrified by Obama’s campaign slogan because these expectations “are also rooted in hope. The hope that real change is possible and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”

Eighteen months after being laid off, Judith Lederman, a 50-year-old divorcee who lives in Scarsdale, N.Y., is ready to consider jobs paying half the $120,000 she earned as a publicity manager at Lord & Taylor. That’s mostly because she’s desperate, but it also makes sense when you consider how this country punishes work effort. While the first $60,000 of her income would be lightly taxed, the next $60,000 would be hit with what is in effect a 79% tax rate. Given a choice between a part-time or easy job paying $60,000 and a demanding, stress-ridden job paying $120,000, Lederman would be wise to take the former. In the tougher job she would be contributing twice as much to the economy. But she wouldn’t be doing herself much good. It would make more sense to take it easy and spend more time with her high school senior daughter, Casey.

Some parents in a New Jersey school district are up in arms after a class of elementary school students was videotaped singing the praises of President Obama, an activity that has been criticized as “indoctrination.”

The tension at B. Bernice Young Elementary School escalated to such a degree Thursday that the school was placed temporarily on lockdown after its principal received death threats over a YouTube video that showed nearly 20 children being taught songs lauding the president, though back-to-school night events continuing as planned Thursday night at the school.

I guess we Common People weren’t supposed to know about that.

Superintendent Christopher Manno said in a written statement Thursday that the taping itself was out of order, but failed to address whether the lesson was approved. “The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized,” he wrote in a note to parents and the media.

Well, this is what you get for sending your kid to a government school.

There was a time when the Guilt Industry focused mainly on white, heterosexual males. But, like Tesco, it has learnt to expand its customer base, moving up and down the social ladder, crossing ethnic and gender boundaries. If you are an Asian family that has moved to a grammar school’s catchment area, in the hope of finding places for son and daughter, expect to be branded “pushy parents”. The Guilt Industry demands that you are shamed for seeking to advance your offspring. How dare you escape the local comprehensive. Your elbows are disgustingly pointy.

Those aiming for a career in the Guilt Industry must be patronising and self-righteous, with an unshakeable commitment to political correctness. They need to identify offence where none was intended, especially on issues of race. A qualification in social engineering is particularly welcome, as is an ability to pin all the problems of Britain’s underclass on greedy bankers, Eton College and Margaret Thatcher.

Of course, this is in Britain — but mutatis mutandis the same sort of thing is happening in America as well.

Let’s see … stimulus money goes, not to private individuals or organizations, but to state and local governments … which are pinched for money, and so they spend it on … government programs and employees!

It’s a fascinating symbiotic relationship between capitalists and professional anti-capitalists. The capitalists aren’t just paying protection money to avoid a few protesters. They are also buying ACORN’s reputation as a leftist power-to-the-people street organization to demonstrate to center-left politicians that their giant project is good for the poor.

Have you ever noticed that leftist organizations that claim to represent poor people of color don’t always follow strict affirmative action guidelines when it comes to their really good jobs? Like the Hispanic union SEIU, which is headed by Andy Stern. Or, for example, here’s a picture of ACORN’s founder Wade Rathke, who looks like if he ever went outside in the sun, he might explode into flames.

While these organs are not monolithic or hierarchically organized, they somehow magically seem to always agree with each other. The Washington Post never gets into an organizational catfight with the New York Times, or Harvard with Stanford. This, of course, is because all are ticks on the same horse – Washington – and must gallop together.

The Cathedral indeed contains many shades. They are not shades of grey, however. They are shades of brown. A drop of wine in a barrel of sewage makes sewage; a drop of sewage in a barrel of wine makes sewage.

Why, exactly, are all civilized governments on earth run in the way they are? Because they are all run, more or less, by the New York Times. More precisely, they are run by civil servants, who were trained by professors, both of whose reward systems are administered by the New York Times. This is the direct path. On the indirect path, ten percent of the population reads the Times or a comparable highbrow organ; the other ninety gets its thought from more lowbrow intermediaries, who all read the Times and wish they worked there. Together, these paths form the Modern Structure, which if not indestructible is almost so.

A treasure hunter has unearthed the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, in a find archaeologists have said may be even more significant than the discovery of a burial ship at Sutton Hoo 70 years ago.

Since September 11, 2001, this is the single aspect of the terror threat that government and law enforcement analysts, as well as the mainstream media, have consistently ignored, downplayed, denied outright and misunderstood. And this lack of understanding of the motives and goals of those who would destroy us remains our chief handicap in formulating a truly effective response to the global jihad threat.

Ask an Islamic jihadist why he is doing what he is doing, and he invariably makes reference to Koranic imperatives. Muslims who believe the Koran commands them to make war against and subjugate Infidels comprise a global movement, active from Indonesia to Nigeria and extending into Europe and North America.

The conversations in question were knowingly exposed in a place of business to two customers who walked in off the streets. There is and can be absolutely no expectation of privacy for the ACORN employees in question. As such, the conversations are not “private conversations” under the Maryland Wiretap Act as a matter of law. I found all this in a matter of 15 minutes on Lexis. I’m sure another 15 (which I don’t have) will find numerous directly applicable precedents under Katz that are completely factually indistinguishable from the present case. In other words, this case is so totally without legal merit the very filing of it is almost sanctionable. And putting “they had a reasonable expectation of privacy” in the complaint is not enough for this claim to survive summary dismissal; the court does not have to accept conclusory statements and legal conclusions.

Shooting ranges, gun dealers and bullet manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation — even though nothing specific has been proposed and the president last month signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

For many years it has been speculated that SEIU and ACORN share a common foundation. This seems to suggest as much. In fact, in at least one appearance on the contacts list, an SEIU official has an ACORN email address.

Roger Stone has suggested the Working Families Party is ACORN. Bertha Lewis’s contacts list suggests as much.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense.

Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics. It shows. In his limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House.

Dr Kealey’s piece – on “lust” – said: “Most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do? Enjoy her! She’s a perk.”

The comments were condemned last night by the National Union of Students who said they displayed an “astounding lack of respect for women”.

I don’t know which is more appalling – the professor’s omments, or the fact that Britain has a “National Union of Students”.